Jasper County Democrat, Volume 9, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 May 1906 — WASHINGTON LETTER. [ARTICLE]

WASHINGTON LETTER.

Political and General Gossip of the National Capital. From our Special Correspondent: The comedy of the Interstate! Commmerce Commissions investi- 1 gation into the combinations and i monopolies of the coal and oil carrying roads has been continued j in Washington this week. It is true that the Commmission man- i aged to steal a march on some of \ the officials of the coal carrying! roads in the Philadelphia hearings and it looked then as though the investigation which was begun in response to a joint resolution from Congress might turn up some j interesting data. But the hear-' ings of officials in the present ses- 1 sion has been more or less of a J farce. It is true that a deplorable j state of affairs was showu to ex- ! ist, but the officers of the roads I questioned answered with their tongues in their cheeks and said | after it was all over that the com- !■ mission could have learned just as much by an intelligent perusal of ! the annual reports of the roads in conjunction with n copy of the Railroad Manual. One instance! was the case of the Buffalo,! Rochester and Pittsburg Railway which was under investigation There were two officials of the road up for examination. One was the General Freight Agent, ! Mr. Davis, and the other the; General Superintendent, Mr. Noonan. Between them they explained that the Rochester and! Pittsburg Coal and Iron Company was the property of the Buffalo, : Rochester and Pittsburg Railway, i The Jefferson and Clearfield Coal! and Coke Company was owned by i the same group of officials, and i these two coal companies owned, mined and shipped more than 70 j percent of the coal that passed j over the Buffalo, Rochester andj Pittsburg Railroad, which was j primarily a coal carrying road, Of course this is in distinct defiance of the ruling of the Su- ! preme Court which holds that a railroad must not have any interest in the commodities it transports. But that is a small matter to the roads. They own the coal companies or the coal companies own the railroads, whichever way ! you prefer to put it. The officials come up and testify to the fact and then say privately that the Interstate Commerce Commission knew as much before the investigation began. The Buffalo. Rochester and Pittsburg Railway has ! been used merely as an illustration of the things that are coming out in the investigation, not in any spirit of malice or discrimination. The officers of the road and the coal companies that it owns are no better and no worse than a lot of other railroads and their officers that will be shown up in the investigation. The question is whether Congress will make any nse of the Information when it has the papers transmitted to it. The chances are that it will not. But any critics who have the spirit of charity left with them and who do not want to be classified as muckrakers can wait for the faots to develop and then form their judgment. tt t •

There is one direction in which it would seem tlmt Congress is doing a good work. That is in the purifying of elections. The Senate last week reported favorably the resolution making it a crime for corporations to contribute to election funds. Now of course the contribution of any amount to an election fund by anybody is wrong in principle and ought to be suppressed. But if nobody had any election fund, then the man with the biggest bank account would be able to go on the hustings and make the biggest show and get his ideas the better put before the people. So people who have a personal or an ethical interest in a candidate contribute to help him in his campaign. Then the other side, seeing that there is money being spent, starts out to collect money for its candidate and it ends in the party in power which naturally has the whip hand, landing more contributions than the other side and presumably continuing its candidate |in office. But the anti-contribu-tion bill just reported is designed to change this. It prohibits national banks, corporations, engaged in interstate and foreign commerce and corporations., organized under federal laws from contributing funds to any election. The penalty in the case of a cor-

poration is fixed at “not more than $5,000” and in the case of individuals, who include the officers, directors and stockholders of the company, a fine of not more than SI,OOO and a jail sentence. That is the thing that will hurt the individual who might not be touched by a mere fine. Unfortunately the corporation cannot be subjected to a jaH sentence. “It has no body to be kicked and no soul to be damned”' so it can escape with a fine. But of course the cerporations are not opposing the new law. They have been blackmailed by campaign collectors often enough in the past and they are glad to subscribe to any law that will prevent raids on their treasury. But how well the reformatory law will be enforced is a question. If it is enforced in the letter and spirit, it will simply leave the situation os indicated above, where the man with the best private bank acoount will Btand the best show of getting his views before the people. t t t Dispatches to the Navy Department state that tbs great dry dook Dewey has reached the entrance of the Suez Canal and is awaiting preparations for its passage through this great artificial waterway. It has been arranged that the mammoth dock

shall go through the canal in the daytime and that there shall be certain places dredged out for it like the sidings on a railroad where it can lay up at night and let the other shipping in the canal pass through. Of course the dredging of these turn oißs will come out of the pockets of the contractor and it will materially reduce the profit that would have been made in transporting the dock to Manila. But it is the choice of two evils, for if the drydock had gone straight through the canal, there would have been no room for other ships to pass it, and the canal would have had to be closed to all other traffic for six days. It looks as though it would take almost as much money to get the lock to the Pbillipines as it did to build it, but when the journey is safely made, it will stand for a long time as the reoord towing perforance of the world. Of all the cakes that Granny bakes give me the grundens bread Eight men and two little boys.If I bad the wings of a dove bow swiftly I would fly, to Roberts’ Implement House and a buggy I would buy, all high class goods at Roberts. See Baughman & Williams for, fire insurance.